A content-rich information fact and opinion blog that advocates, educates, professes, affirms, defends and furnishes facts while restoring truth to the Middle East narrative about the legitimate and sovereign nation of Israel. On the internet with news and opinions from the right since 2003, and on forum boards, blasting Arabists, neo-nazis, Islamists and other Jew-haters, since 1999.

April 21, 2007

Residents of the Gush Etzion hilltop community of Sde Boaz had hundreds of grape vines and scores of fruit trees uprooted and destroyed Friday. The latest vandalism, though the most costly yet, is just the latest in a string of attacks on the community’s property.

The agricultural, eco-friendly community, located about a mile north of the town of Neve Daniel, was victim to a similar attack on the Jewish holiday of Tu B'Shvat earlier this year, when one of its orchards was destroyed.

Residents of the agricultural community said that in addition to the destruction of the Cabernet Sauvignon vineyards and fruit trees Friday, expensive irrigation systems were damaged and stolen as well. The Arab Muslim vandals used donkeys to plow under the hundreds of vines and uproot the fruit trees. “This carob tree was planted so our grandchildren could eat of its fruits,” said resident Gideon Kelman, holding the broken remains one of the slow-growing trees. “They have destroyed that.”

Amit Barak, a native of the Galilee city of Nazereth and now in charge of security in Sde Boaz, said that the entire incident happened during a three-hour window period Friday morning. “Someone went down this morning to prune his vines and everything was fine, and then, just a few hours after he finished, we noticed everything had been destroyed.” The vineyards and fruits trees were located on terraces lower down on the unfenced community’s hillside that cannot be seen from the community itself, where the IDF and residents conduct regular patrols.

Arabs and leftists, including ISM and Peace Now, have been frequenting the vicinity on almost a weekly basis since the initial attack on the community’s orchard. That attack took place in a valley below the community as residents stood by peacefully on the Sabbath of Tu B’Shvat, refusing to respond to the provocations by the crowd of foreign activists, who later attacked IDF soldiers attempting to carry out an arrest.

Last week, foreign activists, at least one claiming to be a journalist, engaged residents in an hours-long discussion regarding Jewish rights to live in Judea, Samaria and Israel as a whole. The foreigners, from the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM), Taayush and other groups, claimed to be on a fact-finding tour and were accompanied by local Arab handlers.

“Every time we take the high road when dealing with leftist provocations, we pay for it soon after,” said one resident who declined to have his name published. “The Arabs they bring with them are emboldened by what they view as our powerlessness and the clear message projected by the police – that it is open season on Jews and their property. When they turn on the radio and hear our Defense Minister [Amir Peretz] talking about how the Jews in Hevron’s Peace House don’t have the right to be in a building they paid $700,000 for – and they take it as a cue to attack us and grab state land - land that belongs to Jews and is being systematically grabbed by the PLO.”

Incidentally, at roughly the same time Friday as the most recent destruction took place, a left-wing/Arab protest against the Partition Wall took place at the nearby Arab village of Um Salamuna, west of the town of Efrat. At the protest, one of the main handlers hosting international activists in the village of Beit Omar was arrested.

Click here for an report by Omedia on the growing phenomenon of Arab uprootings of Jewish agriculture.

Hey, Who's the Guy With the Sword?

Attention, Readers

Attention civilized nations:

Join us here at Smooth Stone along with other people of good conscience and put an end to the brutal terror of the Palestinian Authority complicit in the ethnic cleansing of indigenous Jews from their homeland of Israel.

Our goal is to educate the world in order to place intense pressure upon the entity calling itself "Palestine" to respect the human rights of the Jewish people who have returned to their restored homeland.

Jews are entitled to self-determination, to live freely in their homeland. Zionism is just as valid as Palestinianism, but even moreso because unlike the political "Arabian nation", the Zionist movement to "Palestine/the Land of Israel" represents a RETURN - not an invasion.

Let's face facts.

We are told that there is a difference between extremist Islam and peaceloving normal Islam.

Doesn't this mean that extremist Islam is the norm and normal Islam is extremely rare?

On Nov. 29, 1947 the United Nations General Assembly voted to legitimize the sovereignty of the restored state of Israel.

If the 1.3 million Israeli Arabs are a model of peaceful coexistence, why are the 250,000 Jews living in Judea, Samaria, and the Golan Heights an obstacle to peace?

If the uprooting of Arab communities within the Green Line constitutes a blatant human rights violation, why is the uprooting of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria viewed as a contribution to peace?

There is not, nor has there ever been, a distinct "Palestinian" culture or language.

Further, there has never been a Palestinian state governed by Arab Palestinians in history. Nor was there ever a serious Arab-Palestinian national movement, until 1964, which was three years *before* the Arabs of "Palestine" lost the West Bank [Judea and Samaria] and Gaza as a result of attacking Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War (which the Arabs started).

Even the original so-called leader of the "Palestinian" people, Yasser Arafat, was Egyptian.

In short, the so-called Arab "Palestinians" are a manufactured people. They are a people with no history and no authenticity whose sole purpose for existence is to destroy the Jewish State.

It's ethnocentric to claim that only a certain ethnic group has rights to own land, as is the claim made by the Arabs. Why are Arabs the only ones entitled to self-determination?

What would have happened if Jews had repopulated their homeland, and the Arabs opened up their arms and expressed brotherhood as their response to Europe's genocide of European Jews?

It would have proven that it was not Zionism that caused this ongoing conflict, but the pan-Arabic racist reaction towards it.

Terror is not something one learns to live with. It is something which the Israel and US governments are obligated to completely destroy. No decent government should sit down and negotiate with murderers.

"We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement...We will wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home." -- The Emir Fayzal to Felix Frankfurter of the American Zionist delegation, Paris Peace Conference, 1919. Reprinted in "The Arab Israeli Conflict: Documents Vol III, pages 42-49, John Moore, editor.

Smooth Stone provides a plethora of facts, data, statistics and links to other important sites.

Smooth Stone corroborates the actual facts against the mythology generated from Arab governments, Arab news sources as well as from Arabist and left-wing media sources.

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